The idea of the field coming from modern physics is used in gestalt and more recently in social sciences and philosophy of social sciences. Here is a wiki with an overview of the field as used in sociology.

This woman talks about the field is made up of both

-Personal experiences - people, places, events in your life

-Vicarious experiences - social media, games, music, TV, films, books, art and other cultural forms.

Like with black gravity in physics, we can't see the field directly, we can observe its affects.

From A way to map a path to your goals using kurt lewins field theory.

Excerts from

### Gestalt therapy, the field and our painfully unrealizable desires. Veronique Vermeir.

Each self carries the whole world within itself, this whole world is the other in me, and, like Patricia De Martelaere (Standard Magazine, October 1995) puts it, there are as many worlds as there are people. Only the unique exists and at the same time this unique is an articulation of the whole, the universal: every Gestalt is a manifestation of the field.

### Francesetti G., Roubal J. Field Theory in Contemporary Gestalt Therapy. Part 1: Modulating the Therapist’s Presence in Clinical Practice. Gestalt Review

Some authors, in line with the original understanding of Kurt Lewin (1952), hold that, at any specific time, everyone has a specific organism-environment field, just as everyone has their own visual field, consisting of the horizon of all that they can see (i.e., Robine, 2008). Other authors, more in line with the original understanding of Jan Smuts (1926), have proposed another conception of the field, which allows the focus to be placed on the bigger, irreducible whole that people engaged in a common situation perceive, and which in some way influences them all.

Parlett (2005, p.60) frames in a very clear way a crucial point: “A particular question eventually becomes unavoidable. Is ‘the field’ ultimately just a metaphor, a useful derived concept and framework that can be used to explain what is difficult to explain? Or is ‘something there’ in the form of an explicit energy field in the ‘space between’?” In this paper we consider the phenomenal field not just as a metaphor, but rather as an emerging ‘something there’. We do not enter into the ontological debate over ‘what it is,’ whether it is energy or not; we do not need to resolve that question for the clinical implications we want to focus on here. We simply consider that the ‘something there’ can be perceived as an emerging phenomenon (Francesetti, 2019a; 2019b), which transcends the sum of the parts.

The phenomenal field

It can be considered as the here and now horizon of the probable emerging forms. On the one hand, it constitutes the possibilities for the many different forms of experience which can emerge in the situation. On the other hand, it also constitutes their limitations, because not all forms of experience can emerge.

The phenomenal field is perceptible by the senses as the atmosphere of the situation (Francesetti Griffero, 2019; Francesetti, 2019d), in which the forces that condition the emergence of phenomena move. Those forces of the field are intentionalities: intrinsic tensions moving towards the fulfilment of the potentialities of the situation. Similarly as with black holes, where the force that bends the event horizon is gravity, within the phenomenal field, it is the intentionalities at play that bend it.

The psychopathological field

In every field, there is a certain degree of absence and presence. The more a field is psychopathological, the more absence is rigidly present, and the more potentialities there are for presence. Psychopathology can be seen as the study of the ways of being absent, and therapy as the art of presence to those absences. Compared to a psychopathology of the isolated individual, understanding psychopathology as a phenomenon of relational suffering that becomes real and alive in the therapeutic encounter can be revolutionary, since it offers direct access to psychopathological field transformation.

How do we encounter psychopathology during the session? The stranger knocking at the door

In the therapeutic session, the psychopathological field emerges. It is the result of the forces that are intended to bear the absence and to open a possibility for its transformation into presence. The absences are moments when experiences that are not assimilated emerge. They are feelings that are not integrated into the personality-function, so we cannot differentiate ourselves from them. We call them proto-feelings, according to the definition of the proto-self provided by Antonio Damasio. They are the signs and footprints of an unfinished business, something that, due to the lack of support, has not been processed and closed. The proto-feelings can be organized as repetitive patterns in the relationships, and as such Enduring Relational Themes (Jacobs, 2017) they become part of the personality.

What is not assimilated and transformed nevertheless emerges in the therapy situation, together with the potentiality for its transformation. The more the proto-feelings are unformulated and dissociated, the more they appear as something disturbing the therapist. They are like a stranger knocking at the door. Such disturbing feelings can be called atopon (from Greek, out of place) (Francesetti, 2019a; 2019b)—something that the therapist would rather not feel, something meaningless, strange, embarrassing, interfering, disarraying, annoying, unsettling. Something out of place, which the therapist would rather not feel or think. What was not shaped, formulated, and assimilated, what has had no right to exist, pushes to come to life in the here and now of the therapeutic situation.

Therapy is basically support for the potentiality brought by this stranger at door. The forms that the unformulated proto-feelings take in the session are original and unique. What pushes in the situation is embodied by both the client and the therapist. The therapist contributes to the emergence of the unformulated by lending her flesh to the forces of the field.

The fact that the therapist feels moved by a force does not mean that it is the client that moves him, as it would be seen from mono-personal or bi-personal psychological perspectives. The forces belong to the situation—it is not just about the client and it is not just about the therapist. What emerges is different from the sum of the parts, in much the same way as when a molecule of oxygen and two molecules of hydrogen meet and a new, unique quality of water appears. That is why it is not important, or even possible, to distinguish ‘what is mine’ from ‘what is yours.’ What matters is to recognize the forces that push and to let them transform the field.